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What’s Coming Here on Monday Mornings…

What’s Coming Here on Monday Mornings…

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So, you’re wondering, “What’s Bob gonna write about in the coming months?”

Actually, not one of you is wondering that, but this is my column. So… Writing about a thousand words a week often involves picking a topic on Saturday morning, and having something ready to go on Monday morning. I’ve actually been working on a few things ahead of time this year, which is kinda cool.

“Really, Bob? You mean, some stuff, you’re not just totally winging?”

Well, I wouldn’t put it so crudely, but yes. I’m trying to go a little deeper on a few things. Including number two below, which I am THRILLED with.

 

DOYLE ON HOLMES

For the entire month of April and into May, The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes returns to Monday mornings. Peter Haining’s The Final Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a nifty book which had been published by Barnes and Noble. It has several items which are included in Jack Tracy’s foundational Sherlock Holmes: The Published Apocrypha.

It also has several additional items worth reading. Doyle wrote some essays regarding Sherlock Holmes, and I’m going to do a series on those. The posts will quote liberally from Doyle’s essays, with my own input. I suspect even serious Sherlockians haven’t read Doyle’s essays in some time.

And if you aren’t familiar with The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes, then you missed my first three years here at Black Gate, as that was the name of my column.

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Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: The Darkness Before the Dawn

Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: The Darkness Before the Dawn

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Dungeons & Dragons (USA/Czech Republic, 2000)

Heroic fantasy on the big screen was in a parlous state at the dawn of the 21st century, and anyone whose crystal ball was foggy about the immediate cinematic future could be forgiven for thinking that swords and sorcery films were at their nadir. The Barbarian Boom was long past, Kull the Conqueror had been terrible, the Merlin miniseries was mediocre, and Xena: Warrior Princess had run its course. It was a grim time, and especially if you were a fan of Dungeons & Dragons style adventure, the pickings were slim.

However, though 2001 would bring to the faithful Brotherhood of the Wolf, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Mists of Avalon, and most spectacularly, The Fellowship of the Ring, in the darkness before that dawn, the options were thin gruel or highly spiced but raw meat — as you’ll see in the films we’re covering this time ‘round.

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Five Things I Think I Think (March 2024)

Five Things I Think I Think (March 2024)

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And it’s another installment of Five Things I Think I Think. Because we all like to tell EVERYONE else our opinions, right? Social media was a godsend for mankind’s overweening self-absorption. Not that I have a problem with that…

Hopefully I hit on an item or two of interest.

1) BARKER & LLEWELYN IS AN EXCELLENT SERIES

Will Thomas has written fourteen novels and one short story featuring Sherlock Holmes’ “hated rival upon the Surrey shore” (“Adventure of the Retired Colourman”). Cyrus Barker is an Eastern-trained private inquiry agent. Thomas Llewelyn is his Watson. I had read the first several novels years ago.

Audible has most of them, and I went back to book one, the aptly-titled Some Danger Involved, and am about to start book eight, Hell Bay. I highly recommend this to Holmes, or Victorian detectives, fans.

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Neil’s Horror Corner: The Weird, Weird West, Part 1

Neil’s Horror Corner: The Weird, Weird West, Part 1

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Dead Noon (Igotshde Productions, 2009), Mad at the Moon (Republic Pictures
Home Video, 1992), and Bullets for the Dead (Visionquest Entertainment, 2015)

I’m sometimes asked why I haven’t got around to watching Oppenheimer or Killers of the Flower Moon yet, and that’s because I’m too busy watching this sort of stuff.

Dead Noon (2009) – Prime

Stand-off with six guns?

Yep. Flaming bullets too.

Uncomfortable chaps?

Zombies, demons etc.

Any good?

No, ma’am.

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Goth Chick News: A24 Comes at Us Hard With Their Latest (Risky) Release – But Is It Horror, or Reality, or Both…?

Goth Chick News: A24 Comes at Us Hard With Their Latest (Risky) Release – But Is It Horror, or Reality, or Both…?

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If you hang around here often, then you know we here at Goth Chick News love a good indie horror film, and if it comes to us via Daniel Katz, David Fenkel, and John Hodges, aka the independent film company A24, we love it even more. Founded a mere thirteen years ago, A24 has been a juggernaut in the horror industry with such titles as The Witch (2015), Hereditary (2018), Midsommer (2019), and Talk to Me (2023). In all, A24 has cranked out an incredible 156 movies across multiple genres, but it has been horror that has gained them the most mainstream attention.

Considering the creativity of A24 titles, it seems almost inevitable that current headlines would eventually provide source material. Most A24 plots have a deeper social commentary anyway, but their current outing is incredibly interesting on a few levels. Civil War, from writer-director Alex Garland (28 Days Later, Dredd, Ex Machina), represents a fairly risky venture for our favorite indie company.

Allow me to explain.

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Avatar: The Last Airbender; A Worthy Adaptation?

Avatar: The Last Airbender; A Worthy Adaptation?

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Why hello!

Well, Netflix has dropped the first season of its live-action adaptation of the much beloved animated show Avatar: The Last Airbender. It just so happened that it dropped just as I was falling very ill and had no energy to do anything but binge television. So, naturally, I’m going to talk about it. A few caveats before the hard-core fans come after me for what seems like a controversial opinion on the show (based on what I’ve read).

First, I came to the animated show quite late. I was already a full adult, with a fully formed pre-frontal cortex and everything. AtLAB was not, by any stretch, a formative part of my childhood in the way The Transformers or The X-Men cartoons were for me (aging myself here). I do adore the animated show, but I’m also not connected to it in the way that those who grew up watching it are.

Second, I’m much more lenient for adaptations than a lot of folks, I’ve come to realise. Certainly, there are just some that are horrendous (looking at you, M. Night), but most of the time, I’m okay with the changes made, so long as the spirit of the thing remains intact.

With these things in mind, let’s crack on, shall we?

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Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: They Seek Him Here…

Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: They Seek Him Here…

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The Scarlet Pimpernel (UK, 1999)

With his double identity, outlaw status, and penchant for disguise, the Scarlet Pimpernel may have been the clear template for Zorro, but in the novels, he was more secret agent than swordsman, and most screen adaptations have been light on the action side. The BBC’s 1999-2000 series of TV movies, in direct competition with ITV’s swashbuckling Hornblower shows, sought to rectify that imbalance.

Richard Carpenter’s new version of the dapper outlaw of the French Revolution was given a hidden array of gadgets reminiscent of ‘60s spy heroes, and in most episodes found occasion to put a sword in his hand. And since Carpenter made the Pimpernel a good swordsman but not great, and constantly menaced him with guns and explosives, it added a level of urgent threat to the stories not previously seen. If Richard E. Grant as Sir Percy and the Pimpernel was less light-hearted than the Leslie Howard and Anthony Andrews incarnations, he had good reason.

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Goth Chick News: A Lost Boys Musical? Oh, Hell Yes

Goth Chick News: A Lost Boys Musical? Oh, Hell Yes

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The Lost Boys (Warner Bros, 1987)

In the constantly evolving world of pop culture the horror genre, like fashion, cycles through which monsters or tropes are currently in vogue. In the dark era from 2000-2010 we lived through sparkly vampires thanks to the Twilight books and subsequent movies. From 2010-2014 it was all about zombies due to the height of Walking Dead fandom and from 2015-2020 we had a run on jump scares and final-girls, while overlapping those last couple of years were a lot of slasher/serial killers. Of course, these subgenres weren’t alone during these timespans, but every so many years Hollywood seems to turn its attention to one specific monster more often than others.

Considering how shafted vampires got the last time it was their turn, it seems only fitting that this time around they are being portrayed as nature intended. Both big and small screen offerings like Blood Red Sky (2021), Midnight Mass (2021), The Invitation (2022) and The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023) have returned to depicting vampires as dark-needing, dirt-sleeping, human-eating, bringers of terror – which is how things should be. The only way this depiction gets better is when vampires are all of the above, as well as being really great to look at. And for that we need to go back to the 80’s.

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Murder as Comedy, Murder as Fantasy: Unfaithfully Yours

Murder as Comedy, Murder as Fantasy: Unfaithfully Yours

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Of all the subjects for comedy (romantic entanglements, domestic misunderstandings, military SNAFU’s, workplace kerfluffles, political shenanigans, high school hi-jinx etc.), murder might seem one of the least promising. That’s actually not the case, however, as there have been many comedies of homicide, among them Murder He Says, Arsenic and Old Lace, Kind Hearts and Coronets, Monsieur Verdoux, The Trouble with Harry, Murder by Death, and The Ladykillers (watch the wonderful 1955 Ealing Studios version with Alec Guinness, not the woeful 2004 Cohen Brothers misfire with poor, miscast Tom Hanks), to name just a handful. …

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A Nightmarish Vision of Dracula: The Last Voyage of the Demeter

A Nightmarish Vision of Dracula: The Last Voyage of the Demeter

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The Last Voyage of the Demeter (DreamWorks/Universal Pictures)

A doomed ship and a doomed crew: The Last Voyage of the Demeter. Rated R – Bloody Violence.

Bloody great film! I watched this film while recuperating from another back procedure in December. The movie stars Liam Cunningham (Davos Seaworthy from Game of Thrones), and Corey Hawkins (Heath, from The Walking Dead.) This film is well acted by a superb cast, masterfully directed by André Øvredal, with an excellent script written by Bragi F. Schut Jr and Zak Olkewicz, and a nice soundtrack by Bear McCreary, who’s worked on a lot of theatrical films and television shows, including The Walking Dead.

The combination of CGI and practical special FX works quite well, too. And an incredibly skinny actor named Javier Botet is perfectly cast as Count Dracula, who is depicted here as an ancient, malnourished, emaciated inhuman creature; the more he feeds, the more he “evolves” and grows stronger.

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